John F. Kennedy

It's one thing to let a couple of pieces of ill-considered and unpopular legislation die on the order paper.

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice did that yesterday with Bills 9 and 10, two bad ideas cooked up by the brainiacs in Alison Redford's inner circle to make the anti-public-service and financial services lobbies happy by attacking the retirement security of modestly paid working people in the name of sustainability.

Likewise, it's one thing to toss a bit of mindless but expensive symbolism over the side, which Prentice also did later yesterday when he mercifully pulled the plug on the Dave Hancock Government's brain-dead $15-million-plus notion of eliminating the "Wild Rose Country" slogan on Alberta automotive licence plates because of, well… you know who.

"Good evening, my fellow citizens," President John F. Kennedy said grimly on Oct. 22, 1962. "This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba.

"Within the past week unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island," the U.S. president said. "The purposes of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere."

Was it insularity and tone deafness, or Machiavellian cleverness, that led the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party to time the opening of the convention that includes Premier Alison Redford's leadership review to coincide with the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination?

Or is 50 years long enough that it's just a weird coincidence that was only going to be noticed by a few old geezers like me who, yes, actually can remember what they were doing when they heard the news on Nov. 22, 1963?

Editor's note: Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.

We were in Havana shooting a scene with Fidel Castro for Pierre Trudeau's memoirs. After the filming, at a private dinner with Castro hosted by the Canadian ambassador, Julie Loranger, I asked the Cuban leader if he had seen the recently released Oliver Stone film JFK.The movie had debuted a few weeks earlier. Castro said someone had entered a Miami theater and filmed the movie surreptitiously. They sent him the poor quality copy. He said from what he saw, he admired the film.

Political Alberta was abuzz yesterday with a mystery video suggesting there is growing discord within Alberta's Wildrose Party over the role of Opposition Leader Danielle Smith that surfaced on a French video service, where it was revealed by a blogger.

The anonymously posted video entitled simply "Wildrose Internals" suggested the Wildrose Party is suffering from a rift between its social conservative wing and its more mainstream leadership.

Hastman, 31, is the Conservative Party's star candidate in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding, chosen to appeal to the electoral district's large population of university students and thereby unseat New Democrat Member of Parliament Linda Duncan in the May 2 federal election.

As the only New Democrat elected in Alberta, which as stated in the Gospel According to St. Stephen Harper is supposed to be an unbroken sea of Conservative blue, Duncan is an irritating burr under the prime ministerial saddle.